One of the most often repeated anecdotes about the direction
of literary studies over the past three decades concerns a
graduate student who complained of reading Kate Chopin’s
The Awakening in three classes and Herman Melville’s
Moby-Dick in none. But Chopin has not always been
featured in the literary curriculum. Though she achieved national
success in her lifetime (1850–1904) as a writer of Louisiana
“local color” fiction, after her death her work
fell into obscurity until 1969, when Norwegian literary scholar
Per Seyersted published The
Complete Works of Kate Chopin and sparked a remarkable
American literary revival. Chopin soon became a major presence
in the canon, and today every college textbook surveying American
literature contains a Chopin short story, her novel The
Awakening, or an excerpt from it.
In this unique work, twelve prominent Chopin scholars reflect
on their parts in the Kate Chopin revival and its impact on
their careers. A generation ago, against powerful odds, many
of them staked their reputations on the belief—now fully
validated—that Chopin is one of America’s essential
writers. These scholars energetically sponsored Chopin’s
works in the 1970s and 1980s and encouraged reading, studying,
and teaching Chopin. They wrote books and articles about her,
gave talks about her, offered interviews to newspapers and
magazines, taught her works in their classes, and urged their
colleagues to do the same, helping to build a network of teachers,
students, editors, journalists, librarians, and others who
continue to promote Chopin’s work.
Throughout, these essays stress several elements vital to
the revival’s success. Timing proved critical, as the
rise of the women’s movement and the emergence of new
sexual norms in the 1960s helped set an ideal context for
Chopin in the United States and abroad in the 1970s and 1980s.
Seyersted’s biography of Chopin and his accurate texts
of her entire oeuvre allowed scholars to quickly publish their
analyses of her work. Popular media—including Redbook,
New York Times, and PBS—took notice of Chopin and
advanced her work outside the scholarly realm. But in the
final analysis, as the contributors point out, Kate Chopin’s
irresistible writing itself made her revival possible.
Highly personal, at times amusing, and always thought provoking,
these revealing recollections and new critical insights offer
a fascinating firsthand account of a decisive moment in American
literary history.
Bernard Koloski has been writing about Kate
Chopin for over thirty years. A professor emeritus of English
at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania, he is the author
of Kate Chopin: A Study of the Short Fiction and
has published editions of Chopin’s At Fault,
Bayou Folk, and A Night in Acadie. |
